Public Lands Day 2011 in the Smokies

My wife Amanda has recently volunteered with the NPS trail crew to work on the Forney Ridge Trail. Every since she went she has talked about what a wonderful experience it was and how great the people were. She talked me into going yesterday to help for Public Lands Day. This is a day where many volunteers come out to help the parks crew on projects like this one. Christine Hoyer the park's trail and volunteer coordinator met us there she is a great asset to the park. I can tell you the trail looks incredible I was amazed. They will be finishing work on this trail over the next couple of weeks and could use more volunteers. You can sign up here http://smokiestrailsforever.org/Trails-Forever-Projects/Projects/Ma.... Here are some pics from yesterday. The first one was the view from the parking lot at 8am a nice sea of clouds between Forney and Welch Ridges.

Beautiful view for the hike down to the work area

When we got down to the work area not too far down the trail we started work. Our job for the morning was to walk down the trail with "dirt bags" a big sack and pick up rocks from near the trail or in the woods and bring them back to the area where the work was being done. Then we got to smash them with sledge hammers and make rock crush to fill in gaps between the huge pavestone slabs and steps. Here is Amanda carrying a dirt bag full of rocks. That is Margaret, who is on the parks trail crew, working behind Amanda.

Later in the day we brought dirt bag loads of dirt that we had shoveled off trail back to fill in more of the gaps and finally we had to get leaves and other detirus material to cover any disturbed areas. If you ever wondered what it was like to build the old rock walls in the park this is one volunteer opportunity you shouldn't let pass by. Much of the work is moving and placing rocks. All the rocks are from close by off trail and it is all done by hand. You will haul them to the site and place them by hand. What you put in place will be there for hundreds of years and probably a thousand this trail is built to last. A couple of notes not all the trail looks like the pics most is still an improved dirt path but the heavy traffic and worn spots on steeper grades are like this now. One thing I will say is all trails in the park are not created equal. For instance you won't find this kind of intricate laborious rock work being done on the upper Hazel Creek Trail because it is out in the middle of nowhere and gets very little traffic. Trails like that are best kept in their natural state a dirt path with some water bars. However, trails that get huge volumes of traffic like this one to Andrews Bald, or Laurel Falls can not stand up forever as a dirt footpath without deep trenches and much damage being done. The upper part of the Forney Ridge Trail gets tons of traffic from people going out to the bald. We were told we had to stop and back off the trail for all hikers and to keep the experience a good one for them. We saw so many folks hiking all day long I lost count. I felt very guilty because all of these folks were showering us with praise about the trail and thanking us repeatedly. It was an incredible experience and I in turn was thanking the trails crew for all their work. Here are a few other shots of some of the rock work along the trail.

More rock work

Josh, pictured here between Amanda and I, was the NPS crew leader on the project he was a great guy and has built trails a lot out west working in Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon and other parks. We were lucky enough to get to work next to him all day and learned a lot.

We finished for the day and helped carry tools back to the top. When we got up to the parking lot the place was packed with people. Christine had Amanda and I stand by the truck and watch the tools while she went to help some others. While we were there we were approached by many folks asking us questions thinking I suppose that we worked for the park. They asked us things like what we were doing and what were the trees with the red berries aka mountain ash. It was very strange but fun. Here Amanda acts as ambassador answering questions about the Forney Ridge Trail from some nice folks from Lima, Ohio. I also told them about John Glenn climbing up to the Clingman's tower a couple of years back which I learned about on this site and they were excited about that.

Here is a group shot of the crew taken by Christine.

Once again if you want to help finish this project over the next couple of weeks just visit the Smokies Trails Forever page on this project and email Christine. Here is the web url:

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What a great job on this. The pictures were awesome. I love the smokey mountains....brings a tear to my eye...when I saw the pictures from the top. Thanks for all your hard work and help to keep the park a great place to be....

the last time i hiked this trail was in a downpour. within five minutes of drenching rain the trail was a half a foot of gushing water with spouts of rainwater coming at us from every ledge and crevice... like a cold, thunderous smoky waterpark...

They said next year they will be working on the first mile or so of the Alum Bluff Cave Trail I want to volunteer for that one too. Also possibly Rainbow Falls Trail next year.

Thanks Ashe, Jen, and John. Mike we will come mow your yard for free from December to March :).

Jenny you are right Christine is a really fun person to work with. I thought she really made it a great experience. She was down to earth, humble, and she didn't take herself too seriously and that was refreshing and made all the difference. It made you feel like part of the team from the start and it made you want to do a good job.

I walked that trail for the first time recently with my parents and was really impressed by all the work that had been done. We had a big family reunion in Gatlinburg soon afterwards. I sent a lot of my relatives up to hike to Andrews who weren't able to do a really long hike I had planned for the younger family members. They had a great time and I would never have recommended the trail if it had been as rough as I have heard it used to be.

How wonderful, thank you for volunteering and for the report! I would love to help out sometime though I do fear issues of back strain (I have an old injury that I'm very wary of aggravating) and so I hesitate to jump in and end up being a burden or just taking up space.